Reid family makes final resting place a refuge for the living

Riverside Cemetery in Fairhaven is run by a board of trustees with the help of its superintendent, who, for the past 82 years, has been a Reid.

ARIEL WITTENBERG

FAIRHAVEN — Some years ago, Riverside Cemetery Superintendent Peter Reid was doing work inside the Delano Family monument when he looked through a "breather hole" in the crypt and saw a school group had come to visit the cemetery's founders.

Deciding to have some fun, he shouted in a spooky voice: "Thank you for coming to visit me."

"Well, the kids were fine but the teacher just took off down the road and I never saw her again," Reid remembered this week, chuckling to himself. "I tried to run after her to apologize. We wouldn't want anyone to actually think the place is haunted."

Such antics are perhaps to be expected from someone like Reid, who grew up in the white house in front of Riverside Cemetery, which has been run by his family for three generations.

The cemetery is a private corporation that was started in 1846 by the Delano family and is today run by a board of trustees with the help of its superintendent, who, for the past 82 years, has been a Reid.

Growing up with a cemetery as a backyard meant Reid had to find different ways to amuse himself, playing baseball in the fields before they were separated into plots, and making rope swings on trees to help his father knock down leaves to use as fertilizer.

If you ask Reid today what made his life different growing up at Riverside, he says he's not sure.

"I came from St. Luke's (Hospital) right to here; I don't know anything else," he said. "It's been quiet, though."

Reid's grandfather, Hay B. Reid, was working at the Delano estate on New York's Hudson River when the family made him the caretaker of Riverside Cemetery in 1931. Hay's son, and Peter's father, Norman Reid took over the cemetery in 1948 and cared for it for 47 years before Peter took over.

Chris Richard, tourism director for the town of Fairhaven, said the Reid family is largely responsible for fostering the garden-like style that makes the cemetery so popular.

The Delano family modeled the cemetery after Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, landscaping its rolling hills and valleys. But when Hay Reid arrived, it was not taken care of, with the grass only mowed over graves whose loved ones could afford it.

"Hay changed that, and then Norman is the one who started planting all of the flowering trees that make it so nice to visit in the spring," Richard said.

Peter Reid said the cemetery is used by Fairhaven residents at all stages of their lives.

It has often hosted springtime weddings and he said every fall the same family comes to take a picture of all the grandchildren sitting on the branches of the "elephant tree" toward the back of the cemetery.

Though it's privately owned, Riverside Cemetery has a good relationship with the town, which holds tours through the space twice a year. Neighbors also exercise in the cemetery and walk their dogs there, something that is somewhat unorthodox for a burial site and that has been cause for at least one complaint.

"Unfortunately, we usually meet people during the most difficult times of their lives but we try to make it as pleasant as possible for them," he said. "It's nice to be a part of the community in other ways, too."

On the walk around the cemetery Wednesday, Reid recounted the stories of those resting there. He pointed out the Delanos, the Whitfields and the Rogers and also the woman who died suddenly of a brain aneurism and the mother whose children still leave balloons at her grave every year on her birthday.

"I have to say I take great pride in this place," Reid said.

Neither of Reid's children has expressed an interest in taking over for him when he eventually retires but, Reid said, "I was pretty keen on not doing this when I was younger, too."

For a while, Reid ran a landscaping business with his brother until he decided to help his father at Riverside Cemetery one winter and never left.

"I've met different types of people, and their lives are always so stressful, and you wonder what the purpose is of all that," he said. "I look at what I'll eventually leave behind here. It's a nice spot."